


glass

by ruruka



Category: The Ren & Stimpy Show
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:22:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28380885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka
Relationships: Stimpson "Stimpy" J. Cat/Ren Höek
Kudos: 3





	glass

Ren goes to smoke in the car and the windshield’s frozen on the inside. 

The rear view mirror crunches when it tilts, a snap of a little black creature’s neck in his hand. It fogs under the aching breaths he watches leave his mouth- a parade of huffs til he’s settled back in the driver side, lungs recovered from the stomp through the half foot of snow that separates the front apartment stairs from where he parks his station wagon on the curb. He’s null but two big clunking boots and a leather coat clutched up closed against the sting of the powdery breeze. Fucking northeastern winters combined with a half centimeter of fur. He’d gone from the stairs to the driver side seat, shook his ears of their white soot, slammed the door and watched more stumble from the car roof all down the window, and with six knuckles offered round the top of the gelid steering wheel did he first plant a mesmerized eye on the perfect little faint little snowflakes melting into the heat of his hands and disappearing forever after. The shoulders of his jacket are wet when the engine thrives at a turn of the key, and the centerboard clock is a piercing green that yells three:fourteen. Got to be the dark one. He can’t see much past the streetlights in his breath. 

The engine starts and cuts again after just as long as it takes the car lighter to charge. Three AM is less dark with the tip of his menthol guiding the way. He keeps it clutched in the cliffs of his teeth as he leans to ball a cheap leather sleeve up over one hand and wipe the windshield on his forearm. The layer of ice doesn’t notice him until the same arm’s banging up in dull strikes against it, and onto the cold dashboard vents it showers frost, and he can blow out his smoke and pinch his cigarette up toward the clear windshield glass to squint better through the meager light. He could swear there’s someone in that neighboring apartment that he’d just heard awake from up in his own bedroom. Swears it, yeah, that’s why he couldn’t get to sleep, that’s why he’s out in the middle of a blizzard sucking on the pack of Newports he’d first torn his coat pockets and nightstand drawers and bedding all up in search of just to flinch with the sudden fantasy of the wretched things forgotten in the center console between the seats. He certainly toyed with the idea of going back to bed, the same way a child toys with their Christmas gift for all of the ten or thirteen minutes that they love it, already stuffing his feet into the pair of boots by the door that leak the least as he goes about the idea. _Is it worth it, Ren Höek?_ _Yes, sir, it’d better be._

He’s thinking the whole way that he’s better off smoking more rock and less tobacco. It’s getting to be more affordable. It’s nothing his father ever caught him doing at his bedroom window and grabbed him up and poked a hot cigarette all down his fifteen year old arm as repentance for. It’s nothing he’d ever coerce himself to go out in a snowstorm for. 

But, right, okay, he’d not been awake for nothing, not lured himself up just to watch the birch trees dance shadows on the bedroom ceiling and from nowhere in his mind trail the taste of a smoke, but once such a thought is born there is no cure. But he only couldn’t sleep because of that... _neighbor_ , yes, here we are. That fucking neighbor’s got their light on and no curtains, and maybe Ren wouldn’t mind so much if he had curtains, or if his own window did, either, but he’d not been so focused on dressing up the curtain rods and closet hooks as he had with getting from their last apartment to this one before the landlord of the former could bang on the door for October’s rent again. _Christmas is two weeks away, dickhead, have some compassion._

...What the hell was he saying? Oh, God’s sake. The neighbor. The neighbor that keeps his lights on that Ren can see all the way across the street when he stands in the window in his heart print boxers and watches that golden square of light across the street. And the noise. It’s late enough for the meat round his eyes to feel tender, which means there’s no reason in the world that music’s got to be so loud. All the way across the street! He can hear it all the way across the street! But when he’s in the driver seat of his car, looking through the frozen windshield and licking on a smoke, there’s nothing, every blink the view of outside obstructing whiter and whiter til there’s nothing at all to see. No light. No sound. Where’s the howling gone? It was music almost so dizzy he’d wanted to throw his window open just to lean on the creaking fire escape and listen even closer, but then he might get snow on his nose and it might’ve woken up Stimpy if he’d leant too far into that siren song and left a bloodied imprint in the virgin snow of the lawn downstairs. 

Ren stubs his menthol out when it’s down to the orange bone, but he’s still watching, still got every canine instinct to hunt pinched up in the eyes that stare for the window cross the street where the lights and music were playing just before he got out here to enjoy it. Ren stubs his menthol out and ignores the tightness in his chest when he slams the car door and becomes another creature of the ankle deep snowbanks outside. 

Thursday night is Christmas Eve and Ren hasn’t slept all week. Only when he gets off work and comes home and falls face first into bed, then he sleeps, perhaps, but never rests, not truly deep any sleep wherein it can be felt the rub of a gloved hand on his back just enough to make him stir, to smell idly the black coffee on the nightstand that’s still warm when he wakes with bones aching. That’s the feeling of love in his mouth, he decides, sits up and sulks the coffee down his throat, that’s what love tastes like. It’s probably something like six PM. The windows are black without curtains, so it could be six or it could be three:thirty with the way the winters round here go, but he’ll bet it’s late as all fuck and he’ll not even _care_ anymore. It’s been years of this. He never sleeps right. Sometimes he’ll be awake long enough to feel his hand magnetize to Stimpy’s wrist, tug and shake and tug until he’s mumbling all tired and raspy beside him, “Whassa matter, Ren, can’t sleep?”

They stay up together on nights like that, from that two or three AM til the sunrise shuts his eyes. Once in a great while, he’ll be on a normal schedule, and more normally not, but within the nocturnal stretches of his life he’ll on occasion turn Stimpy with him; it’ll be something between eleven at night and four in the morning, right after he’s finished his coffee and yesterday’s paper and he’ll come out of the bathroom with hands still wet and ears prickling to the sound of the vacuum running in the den, and without a moment to wait grabs up the Dustbuster and whirs it on as he goes on his grinning way to get the hard to reach spots. 

Having someone with which to share his aching life with is like a stretcher to guide his most snarling wounds. Snapped femurs and black blood. That’s the type of wounds Ren thinks represent him best. And Stimpy will always always, always always have a bandage on hand. 

Ren breaks the dishes on Wednesday night.

When the first tea cup breaks, he remembers the red fingerprints on his mother’s tea cup handles and porcelain saucer lips after she’d snack on pistachios in her big soft armchair, the same ones ashamedly on the page corners of every book he’d ever borrowed from her shelf. 

Then the heavy glass tumbler turns his knuckles purple, and that makes him think about just shy of a week before when it was Christmas Eve, and Ren hadn’t slept all week yes, that Christmas Eve. Ren remembers two moments distinctly, the first being pouring the glass of Jack Daniels, the second being setting it on the dining room table. He sat with it all of two sips before Stimpy rounded the corner, arms teeming with wrapped gifts. He caught sight of Ren and froze. He caught sight of him, and the next sensation that tickled Ren was the sound in his ears of backpedalling the rug bunched, a tosing clatter, the hall closet slamming. 

“I thought you were in bed,” Stimpy said breathlessly on returning. “Y,” he stuttered, “Y’know, Santa’ll be here any minute, you should probably _get_ to bed.” 

“Eh. Later,” was all he cuffed, nodded toward the empty chair at the dining table with its wobbly back leg. “Sit with me.”

(Ren asks things like that more than one might think, “Sit with me,” “Lay down with me,” “Rub my back,” “Give me a hug,” but Ren only asks when it’s really needed, right then and every night they’ve sat together splitting a bowl of a milk and Crunchberries, or every night they’ve sat together and read the newspaper off Silly Putty while Ren gagged down a cigar, always the kitchen light dim and grasping). 

Ren didn’t pull the other chair toward him, but Stimpy did no hesitation, went on with that big goofy tongue hanging out of his smile as he dragged the chair across the tile to sit elbow to elbow with Ren, back leg wobbling. There’d hardly been a second between Stimpy reaching out to take his drink off its coaster and Stimpy asking, “Whatcha drinking?” with a wet slug back. Ren didn’t mind, never does, just snatched it back and snapped, “Can’t I have anything for myself without you sticking your stinky little kitty paws in it?” anyway, because, well, can’t he? Stimpy’s wiping his wrist over his mouth as Ren’s tipping the tumbler of whiskey toward his own, rolls his eyes, nudges one foot sharply out enough to topple the second chair by its wobbly, wobbly back leg. 

That’s what Ren thinks about when he’s bullying the glassware in the sink. Christmas Eve they shared a drink and Christmas morning Ren’s headache reminded him never to again. And then on Wednesday night he breaks the dishes. The clog in the kitchen drain started long ago enough to justify the six inches of water in the bottom being an opaque broth, and Ren on his drive home had glanced to the top of his hand where this morning he’d at last written _DRAINO_ with a felt tip marker; he faces the sink grasping the bottle of it in one hand and a disgusted sneer wrapping up his face like ivy. If he’s to break down what happens there, it isn’t much, just tossing the bottle of store brand Drano on the counter and going at the dirty dishes in the sink with fists blazing rather than take care enough to put them somewhere else while he snakes the drain of its grease buildup. In between or far before, he’d been irritated firstly that he’d come home to an empty house- Stimpy’d ought to have dinner done already, and he isn’t even home? How far could he’ve gotten without the car to take, either? Ren thinks about that as he breaks the first tea cup and cracks the Christmas tumbler. Stimpy was supposed to _clean_ these dishes, Stimpy was supposed to bail the water out the window so Ren could get his hands in the sink without hwarfing. Stimpy is _supposed_ to _be here right now_ , and- and Ren flinches at the warm hand on his back that lets him know he is. 

“You poor thing, you’re bleeding,” Stimpy croons from over his shoulder. He’s got so thick a look of sadness on his face that Ren might later redirect his bruised fist into his own face. “I’m sorry, Ren, I was going to do the dishes once I got home.” Between them, he lifts a jug to the countertop. “I was out buying Drano. Didja ever notice it’s spelt without an _i?_ ”

Ren stares, expressionless, at Stimpy, blinks, and all the sudden he’s braving his way through the sting of rubbing alcohol on his hands, black ink reminder smudging away the same way the wet streaks of blood do. 

“My dad broke our dishes when I was a kid,” Ren says without their eyes ever meeting. “He said they were a boundary between us, and we’d grow closer by breaking them. Crazy fucking bastard.”

“Dogs show their love in such funny ways,” Stimpy says back, and Ren flexes his fingers and thumbs to feel the bandages wrapped around them tighten, all saturated rainbow colors with cartoon smiles adorning his bloodied knuckles. 

(That line- “Dogs show their love in funny ways.” Maybe he’s heard that before, or at least seen it on Stimpy’s face as their exchanges went on, the ones where Ren tends to _show his love_ most. “You don’t find Marco to be handsome, do you, Stimpy?” “Marco? The weed dealer?” “So you know who he is by name? That’s it! He’s never coming here again.”)

By the weekend, Ren’s sleeping a solid midnight to ten AM, which makes him if nothing else much less trigger happy. There’s one night he dreams about some place he doesn’t recognize. It’s a house of next Tuesday type chrome, only farther in the future, _much_ farther, a 2001 or 2011 kind. Ten or twenty years in the future like that, his dream tells him he’ll be working his same factory job and Stimpy’s still home baking. They have a great big yellow house with dark green shutters (it’s usually white in his conscious fantasies, a little white house he painted himself with a picket fence around it- whoever’s designed the dreamworld house has got to study some color theory) and inside, they have one bed they share together, a nice fancy desktop computer that’s thrice as big as the ones invented now, they have a microwave that makes popcorn in ten seconds and record players that read you books! Inside the house of Ren’s most purple dreams, there’s a big mahogany fireplace that keeps them warm, them the married Höeks and a baby in between, a clingy little puppy that looks like Ren and is named after Stimpy’s moggy of a father or something noble like that. Ren dreams that he could just reach out and touch Jupiter’s rings, but then later he’s eating lunch at work, on a bench just himself and the post it note from his lunch scrawled in red Sharpie hearts that’s crumpled up in his sweating hand, and remembers that Saturn is the one with the rings, not Jupiter. Idiot. 

The next night after that, he dreams about a golden light, and from that dream he wakes to find the golden light come from the apartment across the street. There’s the music again, that cathedral of sound that traps him in its savory chill. The green light off Daisy Buchanan’s dock. His eyes are thin and twitchy as he stands and watches the light through their bedroom window, listens to every shrill he can catch through the glass. 

“Mm- hey, what’re you looking at over there?” lifts Ren at the ears. Quick turns his gaze for Stimpy leaning up in bed to squint at him, eyes yellowed with night. 

Ren looks through the window and the music is gone, but the light is still there, he can see it, could just about leave fingerprints on its heat. 

“Nothing,” he says when he’s crawling under the blanket again to press all his cold limbs against Stimpy’s warm ones. “There was a firetruck outside, is all.”

“Wow, uh, a real firetruck,” Stimpy says to make believe he’s awake, and Ren doesn’t bother to shake him when the snoring picks up right after. Sleep is good. Sleep is what they both ought to wed. 

“Yeah, a real big firetruck. It _whizzed_ right by, lights and sirens blaring. Somebody musta forgot to put their cig out. Maybe the whole house went down in flames.”

“You’re so talented, Renny,” Stimpy says, eyes closed, voice settled so deeply in his throat it could just about be brass. He chokes on a breath before it rattles out properly, with it following, “And we have to...put the- put the pie in the oven so we can get the...tickets to the George Michael concert.”

Ren scoffs, “What in the hell are you dreaming about, man?”, and Stimpy murmurs something like, “About- About, we’re going to Canada to eat dirt, and tell Ren he can come along, too…”

“Hey, who are you talking to that isn’t me?” An austerity props him up sitting, a stiffness pulling the blankets from his skinny thighs in a huff. “Whatever. I’m gonna go smoke in the car.”

The light across the street flicks off just as soon as he tugs his boots on, but Ren's got better things to worry about. 


End file.
